Thursday, January 12, 2017

Hungary Looks to ‘Sweep Away’ Soros-Linked Organisations

A Hungarian MP has announced a proposal to “sweep away” non-governmental organisations linked to Hungarian-born left wing financier billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundations.

The move was announced Tuesday by Szilárd Németh, Vice President of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party, who said the activities of Soros-affiliated groups were linked to the promotion of mass migration. Németh stated he will introduce legislation to effectively ban their activities in Hungary, the Budapest Business Journalreports.

“Fake civil organizations of the Soros empire are paid in order to encourage the spread of political correctness and global capital overcoming national governments,” Németh said. He added, “Every means must be employed to hold back such organizations, and I believe they should be cleaned out of here. And to this end, I feel, the international opportunity has arrived with the election of the new U.S. president.”

Prime Minister Orbán has been a leading supporter of U.S. President-Elect Donald J. Trump in Europe for months and was one of the first government leaders to endorse Trump for the presidency.

The new proposed legislation would see the financial records of the heads of the Soros-linked NGOs to be made public as the government claims that despite them not receiving public funds, their work is a matter of public interest.

The Hungarian government has long been a fierce critic of the work of the Open Society Foundations and its operation in Hungary, especially regarding the migrant crisis.

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltán Kovács told Breitbart London of the importance of transparency for NGOs especially when they are foreign funded and make “irresponsible” attempts at influencing policy makers through activism rather than democracy. He said the problem was not limited to Hungary, but was a worldwide issue.

Mr. Soros has admitted that he and his NGOs have directly had a hand in promoting mass migration and in a reply to a statement from Prime Minister Orbán he said, “Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle”.

Leaked documents last year proved also that the interests of Soros were not purely altruistic, as the Open Society Foundations claimed that the migrant crisis could be exploited to raise more money for the group and its agenda.

Former Hungarian intelligence chief László Foldi has also accused pro-migrant groups of conducting a “military operation” to weaken the sovereignty of nation states and their borders by mobilising migrants. “What we seeing every day here is a fourth generation military operation against Europe. Not using traditional weaponry to enforce a strategy, but using economic and social infrastructure, and one element of that is the actions carried out by civilian humanitarian organisations,” he said.

The legislation will likely be put to a vote in the Hungarian parliament in March and the coalition of conservative Fidesz and far-right party Jobbik are seen as likely to pass it. The Open Society Foundations replied to the Hungarian proposal Wednesday telling Bloomberg, “The Open Society Foundations will continue to work in Hungary despite government opposition to our mission of fairer, accountable societies”.